Incursions And Operations: The Division 1.1 Has Arrived

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The Division’s [official site] 1.1 update has arrived, bringing the first Incursion mission. Going by the name Falcon Lost, it’s an end-game challenge and Massive recommend you take three pals along if you’re going to tackle it. You can try it solo or with one or two companions, but you’re likely to struggle as it’s built for four and doesn’t scale to group size. Along with the Incursion, there’s another attempt to breathe life into the Dark Zone, with randomised non-contaminated valuable loot drops once an hour. Massive have also added loot-sharing between groups and made loads of minor changes.

I haven’t played for a while, primarily because other games have been happening and distracting me, but also because the people I was playing with have either become dads recently (THANKS, Graham) or sped through to the highest of levels while I’m still strolling through story missions. I would like to go back but I’m not sure that I will – odd how easy it is to miss the boat. Or, in this case, fall off the boat just as it’s getting out of port and into the open sea.

Still, for people who are still playing this seems like a healthy update. Of course, a great deal will depend on how enjoyable the Incursion mission actually is – there’s a fairly detailed description of what to expect in this (Ubisoft-led) interview with game director Peter Mannerfelt, in which he specifies that an Incursion is not a Raid:

Raids are composed of multiple groups, so Incursions are not a raid in the MMO sense. Their difficulty, however, is comparable. Playing Falcon Lost in Challenge Mode will be extremely difficult, and will only be in reach of the best agents, using the right strategy and perfect coordination.

If all of that’s actually true, I’d be delighted. And when I say ‘all of that’, I’m specifically referring to the idea that completing the Incursion in Challenge mode will “only be in reach of the best agents”. If I have one major complaint about The Division, and similarly structured games, it’s that success usually comes through perseverance as much as skill. Fail once, try again, fail a hundred times, return with a bigger gun. If the design of Falcon Lost is smart enough to bring out the best in players, rather than just encouraging players to have the best stuff, I’d very much like to play it.

And to fail.

Loot-sharing and Dark Zone random drops are the other marquee changes. The former addition won’t allow you to trade with anyone in the world at anytime, and the limitations seem sensible:

You can only share items for during the first 2 hours after you have acquired them
Items can only be shared with players who are currently in your group and who were also in your group when the item was originally dropped

And the Dark Zone drops are another way to encourage competition in The Division’s murky regions. Random high-level loot drops that don’t require evacuation and decontamination. That should see groups converging on the spot and fighting to the bitter end. If I do go back to the game, I’d like the Dark Zone to feel threatening and forbidden.

The way our crafting feature is designed is to offer an alternative for players to temporarily complete their gear, by crafting missing pieces of their level. For End-Game we want crafting and our different in-game economies to provide reliable but slower source of gear compared to loot dropped from named enemies. If after many attempts you could not find said item, you should have acquired enough materials to try to craft something similar instead. It will not replace the item, but you will still be rewarded for your persistence.

More loot from named enemies and fewer crafting materials. That seems sensible. I always prefer finding a good bit of loot rather than having to make it for myself. I’m an adventurer embedded military operative, damn it, not an Etsy store.

Alongside the Incursion and other changes, yesterday’s update also saw the arrival of Operation ISAC, which will showcase new weekly assignments. There is a video in which a hybrid of Shia LaBeouf and Justin Long explains all.

There’s a fairly large RPS community, it’s the first multiplayer AAA game in a while that a few of us have enjoyed at the same time, and there are loads of RPS readers playing it beyond those who play together on the forums. I appreciate there’s a lot of coverage but it’s purely because we’re interested in the game and lots of readers are (even if they don’t comment on every article :) ).

It’s likely to fade a little now but if similar happens with Stellaris next month or Warhammer the month after, it’ll be because they turn out as exciting as we’re hoping, not because of sponsorship.

I don’t think any of us expected The Division to win us over – I was totally dismissive of it until the first time I played it – so it was a pleasant surprise, and a game that suited guides and whatnot. I’d like to do a big series of guides for Dark Souls III, for instance, but I also don’t want to tempt people with spoilers. And even advice feels like a spoiler at times in the Souls games.

I think you being a tad elitst here and it comes over poorly. You are not an arbitor of taste, nor are you sufficiently enlightened enough to decide what people can enjoy. I personally really enjoy the Division, as well as RPS, and thus enjoy reading about what the team think of the game. Perhaps you should aallow people to enjoy what they like and focus your attention on games you like.

They’re probably writing about it because a lot of people like the game more than you do. Funny though, when I see an article about a game I’m not interested in, I just skip over it. Have you thought of doing that?

I’ve appreciated all the articles. I just picked up The Division over the weekend, and RPS helped set me up for success. Some people don’t like The Division, but a lot of people do. The folks at RPS have really been digging it, and so have the people over on the forums here.

I have seen the same thing happen before. It’ll happen again. Anytime something comes out that’s a big hit with the RPS staff and community forums, it gets a shitload of coverage.

Supply drops = murder fest. Same as always, rogues camping at the drop zones will gank you and steal the loot. They also again screwed the pooch by adding two super 204 rated weapons that just costs DZ points to buy the blue prints for. Again, like the Vector, everyone will have the First Wave M1A and the AUG. It gets uninteresting when everyone has the same guns.

The gear sets are the best thing thus far I think – the DZ bosses drop them, the challenge mode missions drop them, and ofc the incursion.

But the incursion…unlike every other mission, there’s no checkpoint…so if your group wipes, you restart the whole thing…thus far haven’t finished it, mainly due to people having to leave, or the ragequits when an hours worth of game time = restart.

I never thought I’d be one of the “they cover too much X!” people. After all, RPS has lots of great content and I’m free to not read anything I want. For example, I never read esports articles, etc. However I find myself reading RPS far less of late (and it was a twice a day read for me) because of all the Division coverage.

It’s just really disheartening to see so much time given to a game that I find morally reprehensible. I do volunteer urban disaster relief work, sometimes with the Red Cross sometimes with community groups and I’m also often a street medic in protest environments. The Divisions’s “PoC Protester Murder Simulator 2016” aesthetic, turned it from one of my most highly awaited games to one I feel is pretty morally disgusting.

(I should note that I generally enjoy the Clancy-branded games, despite my less-than-conservative bent. Also real-life gun owner. Not knee-jerk repelled by any of that.)

I mean, YMMV of course, many folks love it, and again, I’m free to move on past Division articles — which I generally do! Just doesn’t feel right that the site I came to for a somewhat more nuanced look at games is riding the hype train with little consideration for the less pleasant aspects of the game.

You’re not the only one:link to youtube.com
The Division’s writing is completely illogical, unless there’s this massive untapped fascist third-person shooter fanbase. Don’t really understand how people can keep looking past the narrative.

I found the premise that a terror virus somehow makes New York the playground of gangs so powerful they’d fit right into Arkham and only secret government super agents (who somehow lose satellite connection in central Manhattan because their GPS catches the flu or something) can stop them so idiotic that I didn’t even bother taking anything past that seriously. It’s just a stupid veneer of realism thrown over a game that’s fundamentally not designed to be anywhere close to the real world, one where only player characters are any good and their job is to kill anyone else with a gun. That some of the enemy armies are so hilariously over the top in their evilness just to justify what you’re doing is just icing on the stupid cake.

Perceptions of the DZ are very contradictory depending on who you ask. RPS writers seem to think it’s not dangerous enough, but every other place I read seem to think it’s nothing but a noob-stomping gankfest. If anything, this patch seems to have made made those concerns even more vocal.

I haven’t ventured into the DZ since hitting the level cap, so I couldn’t speak to its current state. But this has definitely been a concern of mine; that it would essentially devolve into DayZ-lite with little room for solo explorers. I couldn’t help but notice there was a lot of impromptu cooperation at the lower level brackets, but it seemed like everybody else was following KOS rules after a while.

I do like the bit of tension that somebody could go Rogue on me, and how that affects my map navigation and tactics. But too much of that and I can’t see a lot of people sticking around.

its not worth running any missions or incursions cause the RNGus won’t be fair to you. crafting is a tedious grind with frustrating RNGus results and a bitter taste in your mouth afterwards.

simply put: they got the loot all wrong, and with each iteration getting it more wrong instead of fixing it.

check back in two years – if it survives that long – and the devs may have had one or two lessons learned sessions and consulted maybe some RNG veterans who did it right after many many iterations (hint blizzard hint)

I will never understand gamers these days… You guys LOVE to complain about the loot drops & the RNG system “ruining the game” when you don’t have the best possible gear a few weeks after a game’s release date. Maybe it’s just because I’m old enough to have spent some serious time in diablo 1 & 2 but… seriously?

If you’re not a fan of games that achieve longevity through a somewhat stingy RNG…why the hell would you ever buy this game or the season pass? It’s not like ubisoft has been lying to us about the premise/mechanics of the game… So far the division has been exactly what I expected, and it may honestly be a little better. Does no one remember what destiny was like for the first few months? Everyone wants to compare this to a game that has had a year & a half to drop paid DLCs that “fixed” all sorts of problems…